The ÅF Group is a leader in technical consulting, with expertise founded on more than a century of experience. They offer highly qualified services and solutions for industrial processes, infrastructure projects and the development of products and IT systems. They are also one of the leading names in certified third-party testing and inspection work.Today the ÅF Group has approximately 4,000 employees. Their base is in Europe, but their business and clients are found all over the world.A part of ÅF-Engineerings business is programming different automation systems to clients. Another part is support in both telephone and personal visits.Because the number of clients is high and the flora of different automation systems is big the consequence is that the employees must have access to many licenses with programming tools.

Detta arbete syftar huvudsakligen till att bidra med rekommendationer för hur ett system för mätning av kvalitetsbristkostnader hos ABB-enheten Control products Sweden bör upprättas. ABB:s globala riktlinjer för vad som ska mätas i ett sådant system har fungerat som utgångspunkt. I rapporten diskuteras vidare hur arbetet med mätsystemet ska upprätthållas utifrån ett ledarskapsperspektiv. I studien har en litteraturstudie legat till grund för en nulägesbeskrivning, en benchmarkingstudie, deltagande observationer och intervjuer. Rapporten innehåller också en sällsynt detaljerat beskriven kvalitetsbristkostnadsmätning som fungerar som riktmärke för enhetens fortsatta arbete med kvalitetsbristkostnader..

The company Sound Precision has developed a new Line Array loudspeaker system (VHA-40). When using this system, their customers need computer aid to get the best possible sound-quality and control of sound levels for the whole audience. The aim of this thesis is to develop a truly useful sound quality simulator for the VHA-40. The system will help the sound engineers to position the loudspeakers for optimal sound by simulating loudspeaker configurations and visualizing the resulting sound quality and quantity. To solve this a human-centered design (HCD) approach is taken to implement a system that is truly useful for the users, meaning that they will use it more and hence deliver better sound for the audience.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, OTEC, is a sustainable energy conversion technology that is not yet commercialized. OTEC is a technology that utilizes the temperature difference in oceans between the warm surface water and the cold water at 1 000 m depth to run a Rankine Cycle. This technology can produce electricity and provide synergies like fresh water, air conditioning and aquaculture. A simulation program for three alternative OTEC systems has been created in order to decide which OTEC system is most profitable; closed, open or hybrid system. In this simulation a production cost analysis is performed in order to investigate and decide which one of the three systems that has the lowest production cost. The production cost analysis also analyzes if the profitability is affected by the size of the facility. After these analyzes, the most profitable of the three different OTEC-systems is expanded by an installation of solar collectors in order to see if the thermal efficiency is improved. The result shows that the most profitable system varies with the size of the facility.

This thesis investigates management accounting systems in a Swedish health care environment. Through a qualitative case study of an activity-based cost accounting system that was introduced in 1994 at S:t Görans Sjukhus, a large Stockholm hospital, the following questions are addressed: What benefits can an activity-based cost accounting system offer the Swedish health care providers? What are the potential problems impeding the implementation of such a system? Main findings: an activity-based cost accounting system can improve the understanding of where costs are generated in the production processes. Comparisons between alternative production processes are improved, and the data may serve as a basis for internal pricing measures. Concerning the second question, difficulty in reconciliating the principles of economic control with the culture present in a hospital is identified as the main obstacle to a new management accounting system..

The purpose of this study is to find out what children think they learn of taking part in activities organized by the school. I started my study by summarize three essays about informal learning. The results are based on three interviews of totally six children in the age of nine at a school in Stockholm. I interviewed the children using a semi structured method and asked them what activities they prefer to do after school and what they think they learn there, and from their friends. The results emanating from essays which were investigating similar topic..

In inhalation anesthesia life-support systems are used to provide gases to the patient and to monitor important parameters. These systems are used in dynamic and stressful situations where the information-load on the operators often is significant. This thesis presents a design concept of an anesthetic system. The design goal has been to keep the information-load on the operator low with the objective to minimize confusion and error.A number of contextual inquiries were made in the operating room during surgery at four hospitals in Sweden. The goal was to understand the actual use-situations when anesthetic systems are employed.

This report is part of the major thesis carried out at Stoneridge Electronics in Bromma,Stockholm during autumn and winter 2005-2006. The background to the thesis is the trendwithin the automotive industry where color displays have become more common for presentationof information to the driver, a trend that has come to the commercial vehicle market. Thepurpose of the thesis has been to evaluate whether programmable logic, with respect to FPGAtechnology, could be suitable for display control and graphics generation of these more complexcolor displays in automotive environment.Within the scope of the thesis the FPGA technology has been investigated, i.e. whatopportunities and threats there are with aspect to environmental and security requirements. Inaddition, the market of FPGAs and pre-built IP-cores has been investigated.

In Dar es Salaam, as in many cities in developing countries, green areas are decreasing due to the fact that the growth of buildings, infrastructure and services has become a priority. As the population increases more buildings and infrastructure are needed and much of the building activity takes the form of uncontrolled settlements, which encroaches the public green space. Dar es Salaam has approximately three million inhabitants, of which about 70 percent are living in informal settlements. The aim with this study is to make a design proposal for a park and recreation area where the Msimbazi river basin in the centre of Dar es Salaam is today. The basin consist of a few playing fields, footpaths and some urban farming, but apart from this it mostly consists of unused grasslands, swamps and forests. Because it is an unsafe place and badly connected to the rest of the city infrastructure, it has become a barrier. The annual flood combined with the constant still shallow water creates a good breading ground for malaria mosquitoes.

Modern IT systems tend to become more and more complex, while the number of active systems in companies increases. Furthermore, the number of security-related incidents is at an all-time high. These new conditions impose new demands on organizations. For example, it is no longer possible to manually collect and examine the systems log messages.The purpose of this thesis has been to make a comprehensive study of solutions for automated collecting and managing of log messages, analyze the Swedish Armed Forces specification for solutions for central log collection and management, and evaluating exis- ting solutions. The work consisted primarily of literature studies and evaluations of two of the Swedish Armed Forces of selected products: NetIQ Security Manager and Splunk.

The purpose of this study is to examine how participants perceive virtual agents shown on a computer display. In particular, it is explored to what extent participants transfer gender and attraction stereotypes that are commonly applied in the physical world to virtual agents. Previous related studies have often explored only text or voice interfaces, without any visually appearing agents, and here indeed found evidence for a transfer of gender stereotypes. Our hypothesis was that the addition of a visual agent interface would reinforce this effect. The results support our hypothesis that participants transfer human gender and attraction stereotypes onto virtual agents, as well as that these processes are affected by the visual representations of the agents..

The purpose of this study is to investigate what kind of idea a group of students in third grade, who attends a school in the Stockholm area, have on group work in school and how they think it affects their learning.The study is based on two questions:What opinion do the students have about group work?What opinion do the students have about how group work affects their learning?The method I have used to retrieve information has been to interview six different students, where the interviews were both individually and in groups. I started by interviewing students individually and then had a group interview. The idea with the group interview was to end it all with a brief discussion about the thoughts that came up during the individual interviews. I chose a selection of six students, four girls and two boys which they all were at the age of 9 and go to the same school.The socio-cultural and structural perspectives, is those theoretical perspectives that my study is based on.

The purpose of this literature review was to investigate how the rearing systems influence the behaviour of dairy calves. Calves are social animals that form groups within the herd where play and social licking between calves are important social activities. Suckling is a complex behaviour and essential for the calf's survival. In the modern rearing systems the calf is usually separated from its mother soon after birth. Calves are then kept in individual pens, group pens or, more rarely, with a foster cow.

Background:Companies of today commonly search to gain competitive advantages throughout different forms of co-operation, one of which is referred to as Supply Chain Management. Although little research has been assigned to the topic of how to manage and control this type of relation, lately a growing number of academics has been arguing that ABC is an appropriate mean of controlling this type of relationships.Purpose:The purpose of this thesis is to investigate to what degree the ongoing debate on the use of ABC as a mean of control within SCM correspond to the present theories related to ABC and SCM respectively.Research method:The thesis takes it?s starting point within the literature, meaning that the empirical information consists of published articles in the ongoing debate. This information is put in relation to the original theories concerning both topics.Conclusions:The results shown in the thesis in some content agrees with the ongoing debate referring to the positive aspects that could result from using ABC as a mean of control within SCM. However the main result of the study is the discovery of a lack of discussion concerning the problems that implementing ABC within SCM might implicate, a fact that we believe contributes to the mainly positive view on using ABC within Supply Chain Management..

This master thesis examines the development of the two earlier independent IR protocols Z39.50 and SR (Search and Retrieve, ISO 10162/10163), now Z39.50/SR, from the beginning of the 80s to 1996 and their functionality in the client/server environment.Z39.50 applications in library systems will allow easy access to information regardless of platform or location. The use of Z39.50 will create a new user environment. Almost all the library systems of the market support the Z39.50 and surprisingly the use of it in Sweden lied on a very low leve! in 1996. This thesis was followed-up by an interview and a questioner among the Swedish Z39.50 users. They could see a huge potential of development concerning the future IR process.